Version 02.00.00 – Hotcakes Commerce Support by Upendo Ventures

Hotcakes Commerce 1.9.0 is Ready for you!

The long awaited version 2.0 release of Hotcakes Commerce is here. We've been working on it for a long time, in collaboration with many of you. We thank you so much for your help in making this release possible. We're so excited to see how much more successful it makes you and your company!

Version 02.00.00: Empowering Store Owners with Insightful Analytics

This is the release that we've been teasing for over a year now. As a store owner, you have more power than you've ever had before, without all of the pain and hassle of manual reporting and bothering the IT department to get you a spreadsheet. This release allows you to make critical decisions to grow your revenue, without the headaches and burden of trying to figure it out or guess on your own.

Prerequisites

As always, please test your upgrades on a development version of your site first. Be sure to back-up prior to upgrade, and merge any noted viewset changes as desired. We are not responsible for any Hotcakes that get spilled on the floor.

Download: Install/Upgrade

This is not a free upgrade. You'll need to purchase a new license to get the upgrade package.

Hotcakes Partners will find these downloads already available in the partner portal.

All of our other related downloads are always available on our download page.

Release Notes

Normally, we'd introduce the release notes a bit more, but we think these speak for themselves this time... Enjoy!

Cloud Product Offering

You can now create and host your store in our cloud environment. Utilize a single vendor for your website, online store, hosting, and support. We’re here to make your company more successful, more profitable, lower costs, and make your web presence easier to run.

Improved User Interface and User Experience

Updated User Interface - The entire back-end administration experience has been updated to make your daily tasks easier than ever to accomplish.
Updated User Experience - Every view has been reviewed for usability. While we weren’t able to accomplish everything we wanted in this release, many of the things we could do to improve usability for you and your team has been implemented.
New Control Panel - A new control panel has been introduced to surface your e-commerce tasks to be only a click away. It also includes direct links to support, documentation, as well as instant statistics and one-click editing when viewing products and categories.

Improved Dashboard

The entire dashboard experience has been thrown out and rewritten. Having been store owners ourselves, we wanted to ensure that you don’t just have a dashboard, but that the dashboard includes easy-to-understand information that can make a difference in how you run your store. Your data is presented to you real-time, in insightful ways, helping you to take action on the information you see instantly.

Actionable Data - One of the things the average dashboard does is simply tell you what the worst or best 5 things are. These kind of vanity metrics do nothing to help you run your store though. What we’ve done instead is help you to see the outliers in each category. If it’s doing well, why, and how can you replicate that to other areas? The opposite is true as well, all in the same place.
Insightful Analytics - Our analytics aren’t just there for show-and-tell. They’re there to help you understand what that number is., why it’s there, and whether or not that number is a good thing. At a glance, you can instantly see if your store really is doing well or not.
Product/Category Performance - The main dashboard was just the beginning for this. You get these same benefits and more when you begin editing any product or category. You can instantly see how well that specific category or product is doing, and what actions you may have taken to cause any trends that you see.
Bundle Suggestions - We wanted to take the same data you’re looking at for categories and products, and then make data-driven suggestions on how to further improve your sales. The first step that you’ll see in this area is with automated bundle suggestions. In as few as two clicks, you can begin raising your average deal size and upsell ratio.

Abandoned Carts

Dashboard - You no longer need to guess or crunch through data to figure out if and how abandoned carts might be affecting your online store. This data is presented to you in an insightful way in your new dashboard.
Downloadable Reports - The abandoned carts and the customers associated with them are at your fingertips in a filterable report. You can even download this information to import it into other systems.
Find and Review Carts - Now you can drill down into the recently abandoned carts, open them, and review them. What’s more, you can open them up during a support call, and finish a customer’s order for them.
Contact Customers - Your customers will automatically be contacted to complete their purchase if they abandon their cart, based upon the rules you prefer. You have full control over this process, including the email template that they’ll be sent.

Improved Performance

We have performance audits with nearly every release, but we focused a lot on performance this time around. While we have significant performance gains across the entire product, some of the areas that we focused on a lot for this release include:

Checkout
Product/Category Pages
Orphaned Data

Improved Security

Nearly all common payment gateway providers will be upgrading their security requirements this calendar year. This release ensures that you’ll be compliant once they do, using the highest available security protocols available for your respective payment gateway.

Support for Everyone

Beginning with version 02.00.00 and up, all customers will receive the same level of support. Questions, support inquiries, and documentation will all be in the same place, regardless of the type of question you have.

Important Notes

Minimum required version of DNN is now 07.03.04 or newer. (Version 8+ is now supported as well.)
Minimum required version of ASP.NET is now 4.5 or newer.
This release of Hotcakes Commerce has been fully tested against DNN Platform 8.0.0.
All integrations and extension points should be tested thoroughly to update the HccApp object, and ensure your integration still works as expected.

Enhancements

18860 - Implement new form pattern library - The administrative views have all been re-designed to make them easier for everyone in your company to use.
19558 - New Dashboard - This release brings with it a brand new dashboard that shows you all of the analytics that are critical to helping you make decisions to increase revenue in your store.
27196 - Support DNN 8.0 and Newer - Many of our customers have begun asking for us to support DNN 8.0. You can now safely install/upgrade Hotcakes on DNN 8 and newer..
23249 - Upgrade to Use ASP.NET 4.5 to Support All Security Protocols - Some of the major payment gateways are planning to update their security standards this year, and this update will ensure that you’re prepared for these updates.
18540 - Product Performance Analytics - The analytics that have been getting gathered since you began using Hotcakes now are being visualized in their respective product and category pages.
18422 - Add Analytics Events for Product/Category Performance - These additional analytic events allow us to help you determine what specific actions may be causing good or bad trends for products and categories.
18542 - Integrate Product/Category Performance into Control Panel - The control panel that merchants see when viewing a product or category will now give instant insights into the performance of that specific page.
19495 - PI: Adjust the Authorize.Net URL to Support the New URLs - Authorize.Net has updated their production URL and will shut down the old payment gateway URL in 2016. This update allows you to be compatible with that change today.
22278 - CI: Make UPS Diagnostic Testing More User-Friendly - UPS testing doesn’t always show you the information that you’re looking for. The messages will now show you reasons why you might be seeing or not seeing certain messages.
19310 - CI: Rate Table by Total Weight Requires Integers for Weight Values - You can now store partial weights using decimal values to save higher precision shipping weights.
19859 - CI: Update Stripe Payment Gateway to Support More Transaction Scenarios - When we originally integrated Stripe, there weren’t many options available to support things like capture, hold, refund, or use a non-American currency. We’ve updated this provider to support those kinds of features.
16483 - Added [[Package.TrackingNumberMarkup]] Token - This token can be used instead of the [[Package.TrackingNumber]] to allow for tracking numbers or tracking links to be shown, based upon the shipping method used.
17372 - Increased Usability with Price Groups Field - When an unexpected value is entered, that value will be parsed and/or rounded, with a message stating what happened.
18700 - Localize the [[Order.Status]] Email Token - Orders placed in stores that use non-English languages can now change the value of the order status that customers see in emails.
20745 - CI: Localized Volume Discount Labels - Instances where volume discounts are used now will display a multi-lingual friendly label to their customers.
19562 - Create Tests for Dashboard Data - In order to continue to ensure that we maintain the most stable features, we continuously add features to our suite of automated tests, including the new dashboard algorithms.
20196 - Increased Performance Related to Store Info - The retrieval of store information/settings has been streamlined to produce much faster load times.
16493 - Initialize HccRequestContext Once on Request Start & Removed Cached HccApplication Object - This update greatly increases performance and reduces bugs across the platform overall. Any integrations you have should be tested to ensure they still work as expected.
22671 - Inject Analytics History - This update allows you to have a much more useful trial experience. When you add sample products and categories, you now will also have sample orders, customers, and analytics associated with those products.
20561 - CI: [[Order.VATRegistrationNumber]] Added to The List of Available Email Template Tokens - We've long had an undocumented token available to European stores that allowed you to inject the VAT Registration Number in your emails. It’s now available in your list of tokens. It re-purposes the Tax Exemption ID Number field.
23322 - Files Aren’t Deleted When Products Are Deleted - Downloadable files are often used across multiple products in a store. This update no longer deletes a file associated with a product when you delete it.
18633 - PI:CI: Able to specify value of gift cards for phone orders - Previously, you were unable to add and specify the details of a gift card for phone orders.
19377 - CI: Email Templates Are Sent in Customer’s Preferred Language - When an e-mail is generated by the store, it no longer observes the store’s language setting, but that of the customer that placed the order instead.
17721 - CI:SI:PI: Localize Stock Message - The "In Stock," "Out of Stock," and other inventory messages shown in the product details are now able to be shown in the customers preferred language.
16360 - CI:PI: Notify Store Admins on New Affiliate Submission - Merchants will now have an option to receive an e-mail notification each time a new affiliate registers on their site. Affiliates will receive a confirmation e-mail as well.

Maintenance Updates

22636 - SI:PI: Comma in Email Template After Single Promotional Code
17636 - SI: Critical error if start wizard on second site
18916 - SI: Unable to access second store after product import
27882 - SI: Shipment packages are not properly separated per the product setting
14588 - PI: Deleted Orders Still Show in IPhone Dashboard
16600 - PI: Remove Orphaned Transactions When Deleting Orders
18623 - CI:PI: JavaScript errors occur on Affiliate Registration & Dashboard without search skin object added to the theme
17021 - CI:PI: Security role not assigned when memberships are zero dollars
15621 - PI: Default HTML editor error when pasting as plain text
12106 - CI: Search Results Price Facet May Result in 404 Error
14939 - CI: Product Types Edit Selected Properties Don’t Sort
20876 - CI: Hide Reward Points When Program is Disabled
19547 - CI: Can't Choose Correct Regions When Only One Non-US Country is Enabled
19240 - CI: Address Book Default Address Issue with One Non-US Country Enabled
16919 - Incorrect Tracking Number Link in Emails
16485 - Package.ShipperService Token Should Always Return a Value
15450 - Hidden Choices Names Show in Shopping Cart
17202 - Page “Freezes” When the Number is Too Large in Tax Scheduler Field in Getting Started Wizard
17196 - Page “Freezes” When the Number is Too Large in Tax Scheduler Postal Code Field
17197 - Critical Error if Number is Too Large in the Affiliate Settings Commission Field
17338 - Impossible to Save Too Small of a Value in the Affiliate Settings Commission Field
17198 - Critical Error if Number is Too Large in the Maximum Order Weight Field
17344 - Critical Error if Input ".00" in Price Groups Field
17532 - No Messages in Order Manager if Order is Saved with Negative Item Quantity
18198 - Affiliate Payments Popup Can Re-Appear After Postback
17342 - Precision Can Be Exceeded in Orders > Maximum Weight
18779 - Error Occurs if Perform Order Refund
18675 - Unable to Save Multiple Choice Product Type Property Sort Order
18797 - Transaction Error When Capturing a Hold Using Authorize.net
19236 - Parent Category List Not Populated for Unsaved Category
19258 - Product Type Property Currency Doesn’t Show Default Value
19260 - Wrong Setting in Data Product Type Property
19320 - Merchant Can’t See Site Price from Order Manager When Adding a New Order
20021 - Unable to Delete Product. Unknown Error.
21054 - Checkbox "Show Title" Label Usability Issue
22246 - Promotion Popup Size Issues with Large Number of Products
22336 - Promotion Popup Size Issues with Qualification "When User Is In Role"
19722 - Free Products Promotion Product Picker Outside of Popup
22704 - Hotcakes URL Provider Logs an Exception on Clean Install
22682 - Checkout Page Doesn't Show Shipping Methods in Certain Conditions
19527 - Promotion Customer Description Field Required Too Soon
23773 - Critical error if input long name in TAX Scheduler
23445 - Product search gives error if localized product in localized category is missing fallback name
23594 - Can’t save changes of region properties or delete region
23620 - Errors logged during product import for Categories and Info Tabs
23621 - Product images are deleted after product import
23684 - Critical error occurs adding drop down list to product choice
24027 - Customer may get a duplicate e-mail after merchant changes the order shipping status
24052 - VAT e-mails only show the first decimal point place for tax rates
24123 - Order details private notes only show the first two decimal places for tax rates

Viewset Changes

Viewset changes unfortunately happen with every release as we add new default features, fix bugs, address browser compatibility issues, and so on. As you might imagine, some of these updates are “nice to have” while others are very necessary updates for you too.

In the very least, you should always review the Cart, Checkout, CSS, and JavaScript updates when there are any. These are areas that can directly affect how well your store is performing.

Read Me (please read this first)

Download all Viewset Changes

Individual Viewset Updates